Technology News, Tips, Tutorials & Techniques

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I’ve never been one to alter the colors of any of my computers’ interfaces. I’m just not that way. Call me boring, I suppose. I do, however, know a ton of people who change up the look of things the minute they get a new computer. It’s as if they can’t begin work until they make their computer their own. I can understand this and while I am boring in some respects, I’m quite interesting in others (I think). I enjoy customizing certain areas of things, so I can appreciate having something fit someone’s personality.

In today’s post, I’m going to give you quick instructions for how to change the colors of the user interface in Windows 10. This is a super simple task to complete, so this post shouldn’t last long at all.

Launching Settings & Personalization

To make the changes I seek, I’ll need to access the Settings window. To do this, I’ll use the keyboard shortcut of Windows+I. That’s the Windows key on your keyboard, plus the I (eye) key.

Once inside Settings, I’ll click on the Personalization option, which will bring inside an area that I’ll be able to make all sorts of changes.

Changing the Background Color

The default area you land in when you click on the Personalization link is Background. To change colors, this is where I’ll stay. In the Background drop-down box that sits near the middle of the screen, there are a few different choices available. There is Picture, Solid Color and Slide Show. I’ll go ahead and choose Solid Color.

Once I do that, I’ll notice the photos that were once available for the Picture background have been replaced with solid colors.

For this demo, I’ll go ahead and choose a blue color, for which a preview will be available directly above the color options.

Choosing an Accent Color

With the ability to change the background color in Windows 10 comes the ability to also change the accent color of said background. To alter the accent color, I’ll click on the Colors link that’s located in the left column of the window.

If I head into this new Colors window, I’ll notice a few different options available to me. I can have Windows automatically choose an accent color that goes well with the background color I chose or I can pick that accent color myself. Also, if I choose to pick the color myself, I can either choose from a predetermined color or I can create a custom one.

If I continue to scroll down, I can turn the Transparency Effects on and off and I can also choose where the accent colors appear; the Start, taskbar and action center or/and the title bars. There’s a lot I can do to make the computer look and feel like my own. All of the color changing options are located in the two windows I described. The Background one and the Colors one. If you scroll up and down both of these, you’ll see everything you need to see.

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I hope I clearly explained how to change the background and accent colors for your Windows 10 computer. If you have any questions about this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

If you’re a casual user of Windows 10, heavy duty customization probably ins’t all that important to you. After all, you most likely use your computer to simply create documents and browse the internet. If you work on your computer every single day of your life, however, making your workflow as efficient as possible is extremely important. As they say, time is money. As I say, too many clicks eventually makes your wrist hurt. Let’s try to reduce the number of clicks we have to put up with.

In today’s post, I’m going to quickly cover a tip that should speed up navigating your Windows 10 computer. I’m going to focus on which folders appear in your Start menu, ready to be clicked. By default, only a few options appear in the menu, but by the end of this post, you should know how to add a dozen or so more.

Here’s a screenshot of the Start menu.

To be more clear, I circled the area I’m referring to in red below. These are the options we have the ability to add or remove.

Accessing the Personalization & Start Options

To access the location where these settings are located, I’ll use the keyboard shortcut of Windows+I. In other words, that’s the Windows button and the I key. If you press these keys together, the Settings window will open up.

If I click on Personalization, I’ll land in a new window. From there, I’ll click on Start, which is where I want to be. This is the area that controls what’s visible in the Start menu.

Let’s take a look what’s in this area.

As you can see, there are a few switches that turn various options on and off. Things such as most recently added apps, most recently used apps and different types of suggestions. This is all well and good, but unfortunately, we’re not in the folders section yet.

If I continue to scroll down in this same window, I’ll see some blue text that reads, Choose which folders appear on Start. I’ll click this to enter a new window.

Changing Start Menu Folder Options

Upon entering this new window, I’ll see a list of potential folders to add to the Start menu. Let’s take a look.

Currently, File Explorer and Settings are turned on and visible. The remaining list is as follows: Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos, HomeGroup, Network and Personal Folder. To turn a folder on so it’s visible in the Start menu, simply click its switch. As an example, I’ll click Documents, Downloads and Music.

Now, I’ll click the Start menu to see the change.

Pretty cool, huh? Now that these folder shortcuts are right in this Start menu, I can easily click them to access the area I’m interested in. That was pretty easy!

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I hope I clearly explained how to add and remove different folder options to and from the Start menu in Windows 10. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

Ever since Windows 10 has been released, I’ve found myself clicking the File Explorer folder down in the task bar for just about everything I need. At this point, I can’t even remember what I used to do when I browsed my computer in earlier versions of Windows. I can tell you that today, I use File Explorer as my home base and I usually branch out from there. It’s just so easy to get to.

While I really do love the setup of this folder, there is one small issue I’m having. I find that every time I launch File Explorer, I head right into another folder. For the purposes of this post, we’ll say that it’s my Documents folder that I use the most. Here’s the question. If I enter the Documents folder from File Explorer nine times out of ten, why not create a situation where it’s the Documents folder that opens up directly when I click on File Explorer?

In today’s post, I’m going to walk through the steps necessary to create a shortcut for File Explorer that will lead to another folder. Basically, we’re going to skip right over the File Explorer view and jump right into any folder you want. For this post, I’ll continue on with the Documents folder because that’s a really popular place to be.

The Default View

Currently, when I click the File Explorer folder down in the task bar, I end up someplace that looks like this.

First, I click here:

Which lands me here:

I’d like to jump right to the Documents folder here:

Creating a Shortcut

In order to accomplish what I’d like to, I’ll need to change where Windows 10 is pointed when the File Explorer folder is clicked. Basically, I’ll need to create a File Explorer shortcut that leads to the Documents folder. This is very easy to accomplish.

To start off, I’ll need to find the path to my Documents folder. To do this, I’ll navigate to the folder using the This PC drop-down in the left column of the folder I’m in. I’ll first click on OS (C:) and then Users and then Admin and then Documents. This will bring me exactly where I need to be, the long and proper way. I’ll know I’m there when I see the entire path in the navigation bar up top.

If I click inside the navigation bar on an empty spot, I’ll see the path written out differently.

This is the full path: C:\Users\admin\Documents. I’ll need this in just a moment.

Okay, now that I have the information for the folder I’d like to land in, I need to create the actual shortcut. To accomplish this, I’ll right-click on my desktop, roll over New and then click on Shortcut.

When I do that, a Create Shortcut windows will open.

Inside the Browse field in this window, I’ll need to type in a special command. In this case, I’ll type in explorer.exe and then a space and then the path to the Documents folder in quotes. So, the entire thing will look like this:

explorer.exe “C:\Users\admin\Documents”

It’s helpful to note that I just copied and pasted that path from the navigation bar into this field by using the keyboard shortcut Crtl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste. Doing this is so much easier than typing it out.

When I’m finished with that, I’ll click the Next button and then type in whatever name I’d like to use for the shortcut. In this case, I thought I’d go retro and call it My Documents. Then, I’ll click the Finish button and a new shortcut will appear right on my desktop. So, from this point on, when I double-click this shortcut, I’ll go straight to the Documents folder inside of the File Explorer, which is exactly what I wanted.

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I hope I clearly explained how to create a shortcut on your desktop in Windows 10 that will direct you to a new folder inside of File Explorer in Windows 10. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

This is an exciting post to write. I know that so many of us use Windows 10 every single day to accomplish all types of work, but I also know that most of us don’t take advantage of so much of what Windows has to offer. It really does offer a lot. It’s chock full of really nice features that can help a workflow substantially. As a matter of fact, I’ll be discussing some of these features today.

In today’s post, I’d like to talk about something called File Explorer. For most of us, File Explorer looks like a regular folder. In reality though, it’s sort of a home base for all sorts of things. And in this home base folder, we have the ability to view a wide variety of files many different ways. Oftentimes, we don’t even need to open the file to see what’s inside of it, which can save a lot of time. Other features include sorting files and manipulating the sizes of the thumbnail icons that are visible in place of the file. There’s actually a fair amount to cover, so I’ll get to it right now.

Launching File Explorer

Opening File Explorer is much easier than you would think. Actually, all you need to do is to double-click on any folder. File Explorer is part of the folder system. So, with this in mind, I’ll double-click a folder I just made on my Desktop. I put some demo photo files in it earlier so I have something to work with. Let’s take a look.

This demo folder is named Sample Folder.

Many Different Views

Currently, I’m seeing the files in this folder using the Details view. I can confirm this by clicking on the View tab up top and checking to see which view is highlighted. Take a look. You can see that it’s the Details one.

Now, if I wanted to change the view of the files, I could do so easily, right inside this View tab. All I’d need to do is click another style. I’ll go ahead and click on Extra Large Icons to give you a glimpse of what I’m referring to.

I can also choose any of the other options. Currently, they are Extra Large Icons, Medium Icons, List, Tiles, Large Icons, Small Icons, Details and Content. It’s easy to flip between each and every one of these options.

A Closer Look at the Details View

Using the Details view is an extremely popular method for reviewing files in your system. The reason for this is because it’s such a versatile format. There are all sorts of ways to position and sort columns. To alter the width of a column, simply hover your cursor over on of the dividing lines and then click and drag to the left or to the right.

To sort a column, click on the down arrow that appears in the blue row once you hover over its position.

As you’ll notice as you click these down arrows, each column type has a different method of sorting. Go ahead and experiment with them to see how they can accomplish what you’re looking to do.

Viewing File Details

Being in the photography and photo editing business, I really need to look at what’s going on with many of the files I touch on a daily basis. One of the tools I use to quickly view these file details is the View Details feature. Inside of the View panel is a button called Details Pane that will pop open a column all the way to the right of the folder. Inside this panel will be all the available details pertaining to any file you select.

In the example below, I merely clicked once on one of the files I currently have held in this folder. The details are to the right.

Viewing a Preview

Just as simple as the last view is to get to is the file preview. If I click on the Preview Pane button that’s located directly above the Details Pane button I just mentioned, I can get a nice preview of the file.

There are two really cool features of this Preview Pane. First, the preview feature works with many different types of files, even text documents. You’re not limited to the types of image files I’m working with in this post. Second, when you’re previewing a file, you can click and drag the vertical line that sits to the left of the preview to the left and to the right to make it either larger or smaller. This little tip can help tremendously when you’re working on lots of files and you need to see them clearly.

A Better Method For Selecting Files

We all probably know the neat little trick for selecting multiple files in a folder. To select a contiguous group of files, you can select the first file in the sequence by clicking on it. Then, you’d press and hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and finally, you’d click to select the last file in the group. That would select the first and last files and everything in between. All of the files would be highlighted, which would mean they were selected.

Now, if you wanted to select random files in a folder, you can press and hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard as opposed to the Shift key. The Ctrl key allows you to click and select random files. They don’t need to be in any particular order or in a contiguous group.

Sometimes, people feel strange using the keyboard shortcuts for selecting files. I sometimes do because I once deleted a bunch of files be accident using this method. It didn’t seem difficult to do either, which hasn’t helped my nervousness. In cases like this, there is another, much more visually appealing and comforting method for accomplishing the same exact thing.

If I click the View tab once more, I can head over to the Show/Hide section.

Inside this section are a few check boxes. As you can see from the above screenshot, they are Item Check Boxes, File Name Extensions and Hidden Items. For this post, I’ll be focusing on the Item Check Boxes.

Take a look at this. With this box checked, all of a sudden I get nice little check boxes to the left of each file in the folder. I can check the boxes next to the files I’d like to select. Those selected files will be highlighted in blue.

If I wanted to select all the files in the folder, I can simply check the very top box in the list.

How to Invert a File Selection

The final topic I’ll cover today is closely related to the last one I covered. In this section, I’ll talk about how to go about inverting a selection. And just so you know before I begin, this little trick works no matter how you go about making your file selections. You can use either the check boxes I just discussed above or the keyboard method we’ve all likely been using forever.

Anyway, I’m going to go ahead and select just one file, to make things as clear as possible. I’ll select one of the files towards the middle of the group.

Next, I’m going to go up a bit and click on the Home tab.

In this panel, all the way to the right, is an Invert Selection button. If I roll over this button, I’ll see a small tool tip appear that says Reverse the Current Selection.

If I click that button, I’ll see all the selected files in the list become deselected and all the files that weren’t selected, become selected.

How cool is that? I’m sure you can find some possibilities for this feature.

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Even though I only scratched the surface of the File Explorer tool in Windows 10, I think I gave you a nice introduction. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

I used to be one of the types of people who liked to know everything that was going on, all the time. Over the years, I’ve loosened up quite a bit and I no longer need to have that sort of control in my life. One of the areas I always enjoyed toying with and figuring out was what happened with any sort of app, whether it be on my desktop, my tablet or my phone. I never got into the whole, let it do it’s own thing and download anything it wants, any time it wants. One of the reasons was that I used to have a very slow internet connection. If my desktop PC downloaded anything it wanted to at any time, I’d certainly feel it as I was trying to work. Back then, I’d let the computer do its updates during the off time.

Today, I have a much faster internet connection and honestly, I really don’t mind what’s being updated in the background. So far, for the past few years, I’ve had no issues with Windows 10 in general. But, since there are a lot of people out there who still enjoy a certain semblance of control over technology, this post is for you.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you how to change one setting inside of the Windows Store that will allow you to control when your downloaded apps get updated. The default setting is to have all apps from the Store update automatically. The nice thing is, if that’s not the setting we want, we can change it easily. We can turn the auto update off. I’ll demonstrate how to go about doing this below.

Accessing the Windows Store

If you have a brand new Windows 10 computer, you’ll most likely see a panel shortcut tile to the Windows Store in your Start menu. Since I’ve modified the layout of mine, I’ll show you how to get there via the list of applications.

To access the Windows Store, click the Start menu in the lower left corner of your screen. Scroll down in the left column until you reach the S heading. Under that heading, you should see the Store menu item. Click that.

Logging In

Once the Store opens, you should see an icon of your face or a generic user up in the top menu bar. This icon used to be located to the left of the search bar, but now it’s located to the right. If you don’t see it, this means you’re not logged in. You’ll need to log in to access many options in the Store. Although you can complete what I’m about to show you below without being logged in, I encourage you to do so to take advantage of everything else the store has to offer.

To sign in, click the small user icon in the top menu bar. It should have a + symbol attached to it. Go through the process of signing in.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll see that small user icon change either to your photo or to a generic one without the + symbol.

Changing the Auto Update Setting

To the right of the user icon is another icon that consists of three dots. Click that. Then, to access the Settings menu, click the Settings menu item.

After clicking that menu item, you’ll see a bunch of settings that you can turn on and off. The first one is the App Updates setting.

To turn off the automatic app updates that Windows performs behind the scenes, simply click the blue switch. That will turn it off. After it’s off, you’ll have to update each app when it needs to be updated. You’ll likely receive a notification when using the app itself.

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I hope I clearly explained how to go about turning off the Windows Store auto app update feature in this post. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

Have you ever wondered how to control who knows what when you’re browsing around the internet on your computer? Have you ever wondered how to control the data you send Microsoft while simply going about menial, every day tasks on your PC? Have you ever wondered how to control the settings of your computer camera or microphone? Well, I’m here to tell you that making changes and adjusting the settings of all of the areas is really easy. All you need to know is how to get to the main “settings” area. Once you’re there, things are a snap.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you how to access the Privacy area of your Settings panel. Inside the Privacy window, you’ll have the ability to make changes to all sorts of functions on your computer, from general settings, such as who is tracking your computer usage to which apps can access your personal information to which programs can access the data of your call history and email.

In Windows 10, the settings are descriptive and clear and the switches to turn the functions on and off are big and bright. There’s no reason not to become familiar and comfortable with the privacy settings on your computer anymore. The days of hidden settings and dark tunnels inside of your PC are over.

The Privacy Window

There really isn’t going to be much to this post. All I’m going to do is to get you to the Privacy window and then do a bit of exploring. To access this area, I’ll head down to the Start menu and click. Once I do that, I’ll click on the Settings button. Currently, this button is in the left column and is the second one from the bottom. I say “currently” because the positions of these buttons change throughout time.

Alternately, I could have used a keyboard shortcut to access the Settings window. That shortcut is Windows+I. That’s the Windows button, plus the “I” button. Press those two and bam, the same window will appear.

Inside the Windows Settings windows are a whole bunch of buttons.

The one I’ll click on is down at the bottom, so I’ll scroll down and then click Privacy. If you look at the next screenshot, you’ll see that this particular button is highlighted in gray and can be identified by an icon that looks like a lock.

Once you’re in the Privacy window, you’ll easily be able to see the areas you have the ability to control. The default landing window is titled General, but by clicking through the menu items on the left, you’ll be able to easily access other areas, such as Location, Camera, Microphone, Notifications, Speech, Inking & Typing, Account Info, Contacts, Calendar, Call History, Email, Tasks, Messaging, Radios, Other Devices, Feedback & Diagnostics, Background Apps and App Diagnostics. While this is a fairly long list, rest assured you won’t need to go near many of these areas. Primarily, you’ll stay near the top of the list and adjust the general settings along with some that have to do with your location, camera, microphone and other every day things.

The General Settings

If you take a look at the top of the General page, you’ll see a few commonly accessed settings that have to do with who you are, your language and how Windows tracks your app usage, to make things easier for you to use while working on your computer. Personally, I keep all of these things set to the On position because I don’t find any of them too intrusive.

The hot topic for internet privacy these days is location. If you’re concerned with websites, apps and others knowing where you reside or where you are with your phone, you should take a close look at some of the settings in this area. I’m going to take a few screenshots and show them below, so you can get a clear picture of some of the settings I’m referring to.

As you can see, some of the settings refer to very broad areas, such as turning your device location on or off all together. You can turn your location history on or off and if you scroll down on the page further, you can see how to turn on or off the location for many different apps you may be running on your device. This is especially helpful if you want to keep your general location on for a number of reasons, but would like to keep it off for just one or two apps.

Many privacy categories run similarly to the Location one. For example, if you click into the next window, which is titled Camera or even the one after that, which is titled Microphone, you’ll find that you have a few more general settings, followed by some granular ones that control which apps can do what. It’s well laid out and easy to decide what to do inside of these panels because each heading and each setting is labeled clearly.

Instead of covering each and every privacy setting in Windows 10, I’ll let you follow the directions I just gave to access the Privacy area so you can explore on your own. Again, everything is rather intuitive, so I don’t think you’ll have any issue.

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I hope I clearly explained how to make your way to the Privacy window inside of Windows 10 to update and change your privacy settings. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

If you’ve ever read any of my posts on this blog, you probably know that I use a lot of screenshots to help explain things. I used them when I’m working in Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Camera Raw as well as when I’m working in Windows. Currently, I have Windows 10 installed, so that’s the operating system I take the screenshots with.

Screenshots are helpful in many different situations. For me, it’s blogging. For others, it may be to record an event or to save something to send to friends. Whatever the reason, it’s super helpful to know how to take screenshots and to have awareness of the various options for doing so.

In today’s post, I’d like to cover four of the best methods I know for taking screenshots with Windows 10. I’ll go from the most basic “everything” shot to the more refined “just the active window” shot. I’ll even show you how to crop an area of your screen and save that area. Each of these methods has their advantages, so I’m excited to share them with you.

How To Take a “Whole Screen” Screenshot

This is the method I’ve been using for years. It works well. And since I use Photoshop for all my graphical and photographic editing, I can paste whatever it is I capture right into that and manipulate from there. To take a capture of an entire screen, simply press the PrtScrn button on your keyboard. You may need to press the Ctrl+PrtScrn keys together for this to work.

When you do this, Windows stores the screen capture in its clipboard. From there, you can paste it wherever you’d like to. Again, I create a new file in Photoshop and use Ctrl+V to paste it there.

Here’s a sample of a partial photo opened in Windows’ built in photo viewer app. Notice the blue background of my desktop in the capture.

Remember, since this capture is only copied to your internal clipboard, it will eventually disappear as you use the Copy function more during the day.

How To Save a Screenshot as a File

Would you like to skip the editing part of saving screenshots? Well, there’s an easy method for doing that. If you press the Windows+PrtScrn buttons together, Windows will save the entire screen area to your Pictures > Screenshots folder as a PNG file. Take a look.

Windows will save the file as “Screenshot…png.” This is perfect if you just want to quickly save a screen capture and email it to someone or use it for some other purpose. You can’t get easier than this.

How To Take a Capture of Only the Active Window

Let’s say you have multiple windows open and you want to grab a screenshot of only the active one. Well, accomplishing this is just as easy as the previous two methods. All you need to do is to press the Alt+PrtScrn buttons on your keyboard together and that’s it. This method is somewhat similar to the first method in that Windows copies this screen capture to its clipboard. You’ll need to paste it into an application to edit it or to save it out.

Pretty cool, huh?

A Special Message For Laptop Users

If you’re working on a laptop with an Fn key, you may need to press that key as well as the previous keys I outlines in the sections above. So, it would be something like Fn+PrtScrn for the first one, Fn+Windows+PrtScrn for the second one and Fn+Alt+PrtScrn for the third one.

How To Take a Cropped Screen Capture

If you have an interest in skipping all the other fluff that’s opened in your computer and would like to take a capture of just a specific area of your screen, a new feature in Windows 10 can help you out. If you press the Windows+Shift+S keys on your keyboard, you’ll see a semi-transparent white overlay appear on your screen. From there, if you click and drag your mouse pointer, you’ll be able to “crop out” any area of your screen you wish.

When you click and drag your mouse pointer and then let go, Windows 10 will copy your cropped area to the clipboard. From there, you’ll need to paste it (Ctrl+V) to an image editing application. I did this and here is the result. I just wanted a sliver of the photo I had open.

By far, this is my favorite. It’s pretty versatile.

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I hope I clearly explained how to go about taking different types of screen captures on your Windows computer. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

Do you know where to go in Windows 10 if you wanted to defragment and optimize you hard drives? What about if you wanted to view some event logs? Okay, how about changing your time zone or viewing your devices and printers? If you do, that means you are very familiar with Windows. The funny thing is, I just listed a mere fraction of the areas in Windows that you can access via one place. And that place is a folder with “God” like capabilities. In all, this folder is an all-in-one location for accessing and manipulating 226 controls on any computer running Windows 10. And many previous versions of Windows, for that matter.

In today’s post, I’m going to explain exactly how you can enable what’s commonly referred to as God Mode on a Windows 10 machine. This is probably going to be the shortest post I’ve ever written because the entire process only consists of a few steps.

Finding the God Mode Code

If you do a quick internet search for something like “Windows 10 God Mode,” you’ll come across an endless number of web pages explaining how to accomplish the same thing I’m explaining right now. On all those pages, you’ll only need one small chunk of information. It’s a code and it looks just like this:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Remember where that code is. You’ll need to copy and paste it in just a moment.

After finding this code (which you just did), you can continue on with the instructions below.

Create a Folder On Your Desktop

Copy the code above by highlighting it and pressing Ctrl+C on your keyboard. Then, head on over to your Desktop and right click anywhere in an empty space. When the menu appears, click the New > Folder menu item.

When the folder appears, you’ll notice that the name is highlighted in blue and is waiting for you to rename it to something that makes more sense than New Folder.

Rename the Folder

Since you already copied the God Mode code, you can immediately use the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+V to paste that code in as the new name of the folder you just made. When it’s pasted, press Enter on your keyboard to execute the new name. When you do that, the folder should change appearance and look like the icon below.

That’s it. You just made a shortcut to an area that controls tons of things. Let’s take a look at some of them.

What’s Inside the God Mode Folder?

Double-click the new icon to see what’s inside. I’ll give you a few screenshots and let you read what’s in the folder yourself if you don’t want to do that. Remember, you can access 226 areas from one central location now, so this is pretty huge.

There are three screenshots. I had to stop because I could go on all night. Give creating this folder and try and look around for yourself. You may have just found a real time saver.

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I hope I clearly explained how to create and access the God Mode folder in Windows 10. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

While I don’t use the command line in Windows 10 very often, I’ve been known to dabble in it on occasion. I’ll tell you though, when I do get to the little black screen, I feel all sorts of powerful. It hasn’t always been this way and as a matter of fact, just a few years ago, it was sort of a pain to experiment. Back in the day, we used to have to type out every command we wanted to use. I can remember being on the phone with tech support once. They had to keep repeating letters and characters to me to type in. One letter at a time. Back slash? Forward slash? Of course, our connection was probably horrible which made things even worse.

Today, things have changed for the better. Now, if I was on the phone with Windows tech support or if I found a solution to my problem online, all I’d have to do is copy and paste the appropriate command at the prompt. That’s right, Windows 10 lets you copy and paste at the command prompt. How cool is that?

In today’s post, I’m going to do a little playing around. I’ll show you how you can easily copy and paste at the command prompt and then I’ll do just that. I’ll change directories a few times, just to show you how simple things can be. Finally, I’ll offer up a few very basic commands that might help you out if you want to do some exploration yourselves. Hey, you never know. From what I’ve experienced through the years, while intimidating, once you get used to working behind the pretty screen, things become second nature.

How to Access the Command Prompt

I think I better start off at the beginning for those who don’t know much about the topic of this post. To access the command prompt in Windows 10, head on down to the search bar and type in Command.

If you use your mouse to click on the highlighted result that reads Command Prompt, you’ll see that a smaller window with a black screen pops up.

This is the command prompt you’ve heard so much about. When someone says that or Command Line, this is what they are referring to.

Copying & Pasting to the Command Line

When you open the command prompt and see that blinking cursor, you know it’s just begging for you to type something in. If you’ve ever seen or heard the tapping of fingers of someone who works in an area like this, you know they are some serious human beings. Just the speed of the typing should give it away. Of course, this post isn’t for these types of folks. Who it is for is light users like you and me.

Let me do something very quickly. At the command line, I’m going to type out ipconfig. After I type this command in, I’ll press the Enter key on my keyboard.

After I press Enter, I should see a few lines appear on the screen. Basically, this command:

Displays all current TCP/IP network configuration values and refreshes Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain Name System (DNS) settings. Used without parameters, ipconfig displays the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway for all adapters.

It’s very straightforward.

Now, this one isn’t so bad, but I’ll stay on this example for a bit. Let’s say I was looking around online for the answer to a question I had. I wanted to know the IP network configuration values my computer was using and I came across the command that would allow me to access this information. Instead of looking at the command and trying to remember what it was so I could type it in, I could simply copy and paste it. I’d use the traditional Windows copy and paste methods (right-clicking for the menu) or I could use the more preferred keyboard shortcuts. Remember:

Ctrl+A – Select allCtrl+X – CutCtrl+C – CopyCtrl+V – Paste

After I copied the command to my clipboard, I could go back to the command prompt and press Ctrl+V to paste it in. Of course, I’d still have to press enter again, but that’s fine.

Changing Directories & Navigating Between Folders

For this example, I’d like to head to the very top directory my computer uses. When I first open the command prompt window, I can see that I’m at C:\Users\admin>. I’d like to go higher than that.

To go to the top of the directory tree, or to the root of the C: drive, I could use the cd\ command. Basically, I’m telling Windows to change my current directory to the root. CD stands for Change Directory.

Okay, this one was really easy. What if you were on the phone with support though and they instructed you to go to the system32 directory? To get there, you’d need to type in cd windows\system32\. Do you know the difference between a forward slash and a backward slash? Would you prefer them to email or text you the command so you could do things the easy way? I would. It would make life so much better.

If I copied and pasted (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) the “cd windows\system32\” command to the command prompt and hit Enter on my keyboard, I’d see this the screenshot below.

That’s perfect. I changed over to the system32 directory. To go up one directory level, I could either type in cd.. or simply copy and paste it in as I described above.

A List of Command Prompt Commands For Windows

I mentioned above that I would give you a nice list of basic commands for the command prompt. I was really going to do that – I promise. The thing is, after looking around to confirm my list, I found a few resources that already did this so much better than I was going to, so I decided to link to them instead. I hope you don’t mind. Anyway, here are those resources:

There you have it. How to copy and paste to the command line in Windows 10. I hope I explained everything clearly. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

Back in the late 1990s, I used to work for a huge insurance company down in Atlanta, Georgia. About half way through my nine month stint, the company decided that it was critical that we, as employees who worked on computers, lock our screens each and every time we left our desks. We didn’t argue because we saw the pitfalls of leaving a computer unguarded. Unsavory folk could sit down behind virtually any PC and do any number of terrible things. But while we agreed, adoption was terrible. The higher ups and the company had to insist we lock our screens when we left our desks. Even if it was for only a minute or so. I guess something bad did happen. We eventually got the message and did as we were told.

Thinking back, I can remember the primary stumbling block for so many of us. It was the mouse movement that didn’t really sink in. Basically, if I wanted to lock my computer today, there are two primary methods for going about this. The first method is the long-form one and the second is the quick and easy keyboard shortcut. I’ll show you the long one first.

If you wanted to lock your computer screen in Windows 10, you could head on down to the Start menu and click. Then, you’d find the user icon and click that as well. Finally, from the sub-menu that appears, you’d choose Lock. It’s the easy and the task is completed. What your computer does after that is up to you. For some ideas, please take a look at this very informative post:

For some reason, as I mentioned above, this notion of locking didn’t really sink in. Today, I think if we were told to use a simple keyboard shortcut, people would shrug their shoulders and say, “Okay.” Keyboard shortcuts are popular for a reason and that reason is that we don’t need to think about them. Once learned, they become super intuitive.

So, what’s the keyboard shortcut to lock your Windows computer. Well, if you press Windows+L on your keyboard, you can skip all that mouse clicking. Your computer will go directly to the lock screen the exact same way it would have if you did it through the Start menu. Go ahead and give it a try.

Oh, by the way. The Windows key is the one to the left of the spacebar. It was the little Windows logo on it.

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If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

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